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MOZART
Violin Sonata in A,
K 526.11
BEETHOVEN
Violin Sonata No. 2.2
BRAHMS Violin Sonata No. 3
3
•
Alfredo Campoli (vn);Peter Katin (pn)
•
ORCHESTRAL CONCERT 3 (69:00) Live: Fairfield Halls Croydon, ca. 1972;1, 1, 2
Campoli’s Home, ca. 1973.33
Alfredo Campoli’s father served as his only violin teacher (as did Zino Francescatti’s for his own prodigiously talented son); Alfredo spent some time, supposedly against his wishes, during the 1930s playing light music in hotels and restaurants (recorded examples used to be available on the Beulah label). But he’s known to most listeners neither for his idiosyncratic musical education nor for his forays into more lucrative fields during the Depression, but for his singing accounts of concertos by Bruch, Mendelssohn, Elgar, Paganini (in Wilhelmj’s arrangement), Moeran, and Bliss (a work the composer wrote for him).
Bel canto
became synonymous with his name, which he shortened (as would Nigel Kennedy for a time) to his cognomen unaccompanied. Testament issued a recording of his set of Handel’s and Bach’s Sonatas (Testament SBT 1358, 28: 6); Decca offered his readings of Sarasate’s
Spanish Dances
in a set including music for harp.
According to producer Geoffrey Terry’s notes and publicity materials, he met Campoli while making a private recording of Beethoven’s Concerto. The violinist became a sort of hero, and now Terry’s issuing part of a lunch-time recording of Mozart and Beethoven and a session in Campoli’s home as the third volume of his Orchestral Concert series, in what he calls a “Certified Natural Sound Technique Recording,” the philosophy and methodology of which he compares favorably to procedures in which the engineers rather than performers have ultimate control. Listeners will first notice that while there’s little reverberation, the ambiance seems warm yet focused. Campoli produced a wealth of nuances in the first movement of Mozart’s Sonata, and I’ve never heard his fabled tone (nor perhaps anyone else’s) in such vivid fidelity; a similar lushness characterizes the piano’s tone as well. The instruments sound as far apart as they might up close in a concert hall, so Terry has transmitted more than timbre: a strong sense of presence and the experience’s three-dimensionality, which pays dividends in the second movement’s dialogue between the instruments. But even if the performance didn’t flow so smoothly as it does, the recorded sound would magnify all the reading’s virtues in ratio in which many recordings diminish them. The recorded sound also captures the sparkling brilliance of Katin’s passagework in the last movement. It probably doesn’t hurt that Terry himself played the violin and therefore knew just what he wanted to capture—and, evidently just how to capture it.
In Campoli’s reading with Katin, the first movement of Beethoven’s Sonata sounds particularly virtuosic; contrapuntal passages unfold with vigorous energy, perhaps partly the result of recorded sound that listeners miss in tapes of performances in which they’ve participated or simply heard live. Noting the effect of the church’s acoustics in recordings of works like Torelli’s Concertos, I’ve mentioned that the auditorium participates as a sort of unacknowledged partner in a performance. Terry’s recording of Campoli and Katin brings that performer center stage. While Campoli’s way with the theme might seem Romantic, its chasteness in this presentation makes it seem appropriate despite several anachronistic stylistic mannerisms. At moments, Campoli’s sound could freeze a windsock in a hurricane. The duo makes the finale strut now jauntily, now menacingly.
To the extent that the ambiance of the concert hall can’t serve as a partner in Brahms’s Third Sonata, recorded in Campoli’s home, some listeners may find the performance less compelling, though it offers some spiky moments in the first movement (as well as some seeming roughness at climaxes). The instruments sound as though they’re placed closer together in this venue, and their sounds seem correspondingly less antiphonal than they did in the first two Sonatas. But Campoli’s violin projects a ruddy autumnal glow at the end of the first movement, and especially at the end of the second. Sometimes that glow can come from an older violinist’s stiffer bow arm (with its correspondingly greater difficulty in changing the bow at the frog), which presses with less varying sensitivity than it formerly might have into the strings. But given that the Mozart and Beethoven readings come from a year later, that doesn’t seem to be the case, and the glow, like a prairie burn, must have been entirely under control. Still, some roughness again may detract from the Scherzo’s effect for some listeners, and the finale, and even the performance overall, lacks the dynamism of readings by Heifetz and Kapell and by Milstein and Horowitz.
Given the startling realism of the recorded sound, it’s perhaps fitting that the program consists of repertoire in which the two instruments form a true partnership. Considering that Campoli served Terry as a hero, however, it’s clear that Terry, in his turn, served his hero exceptionally well. That hero also served himself well—these live performances sound communicative as well as brilliant: far from superficial, they richly deserve the lavish package in which they’ve been wrapped. This issue deserves to be a part of most collections. Hugh Bean once said that if an alien wanted to know what a violin sounded like, he’d play Milstein’s recording of the Goldmark Concerto. But in a pinch, this one might suffice. Very strongly recommended.
Robert Maxham
This article originally appeared in Issue 33:4 (Mar/Apr 2010) of
Fanfare
Magazine.
